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Comment by MaxBarraclough | Hacker News Reader

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MaxBarraclough

You might be interested in the IndieWeb folks' thoughts: https://indieweb.org/POSSE

> Way down on this list is "stop commenting on HN",

I don't see how HN is what's wrong with the web. It's a very well managed online community.

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> I don't see how HN is what's wrong with the web. It's a very well managed online community.

I would say that, while what you're saying is true, it's also a very intense echo chamber. VCs, startup-culture and lots of the work generated by YCombinator has contributed to the hostility of the web in the first place.

But doesn't this also mean that if enough people start echoing the right sound, like here in this thread and many others, it will start to reverberate in these VC's and startups' ears who then hopefully take these considerations to heart?

Sure, but it's a huge stretch to think that a VC-oriented echo chamber would start thinking the right things. The motives of the people that own and operate this forum are not necessarily aligned with the goals we're describing here, by definition.

Remember when everyone used to praise Google (deservedly) about its "do no evil" motto? The problem w/ sites like HN is not inherently about the quality of community or the content, but that aggregation is philosophically antithetical to the openness of the web.

The charm of the web of old is that you could own your space and if you wanted your pages to have animated gifs of rainbows and unicorns, you could. Likewise if people wanted to customize their view of the web, they could via things like RSS.

Contrast to nowadays, where we collectively consider experiments about omitting noise from HN API via AI something that is "cool". The very aggregating nature of HN that brought people together in the first place can also be a limitation against branching out onto your own directions/subcultures (e.g. the comments about echo chambers).

> I don't see how HN is what's wrong with the web

I think he's saying it's a distraction. I agree.

this. Also I invest way too much emotional involvement in HN commenting. I find it difficult to maintain emotional detachment and not get angry/happy/annoyed/worried/whatever about how many upvotes my comments get.

On my list of "important things I need to have on my mind" whether my latest HN comment got upvoted is waaaaaaaay down there (possibly not enough emphasis there on how little this truly matters to my life). And yet it takes up a lot more mental space than that (evidence: this comment).

I don't seem to be able to not give a shit about it, so I'm probably better off not doing it at all.

... well, upvoted ;)

But consider this a big fat upvote for your life in general, and not related to HN

I disagree with your HN comment. HN is pretty well known to be astroturf forum in fact that's the reason lobster.rs and other alternatives have been founded.

I think you're looking for https://lobste.rs/

From all publicly available evidence, Lobste.rs founding had absolutely nothing to do with HN being an “astroturf forum” in 2012, rather the opposite. Strong moderation lacking in communication seems to have been the primary driver, with the creator being shadow banned and ghosted by the HN mods which basically meant Paul Graham at the time.

https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker...

https://lobste.rs/about

> Lobste.rs founding had absolutely nothing to do with HN being an “astroturf forum”

It absolutely had everything to do with it. That's the reason lobste.rs is invite only forum. They had a rather big drama there recently as astroturfer still snuck in even through invite only system resulting in increasing of account restrictions on posting etc.

Personally I think their limits are a bit too strict though when you browse hacker news almost every day you can see how that's necessary.

Is that also the reason they launched with a public mod log, tags, and downvote explanations?

The presence of a trivially bypassed invite tree completely invalidates the public, historical reasoning behind the founding from the founder themself in 2012?

Feel free to open those links I posted before replying.

That's the first I've heard of this. I'd be interested to read more. Do you have any sources to back up the claim that HN is a well known astroturth forum.

I wouldn't say well known, but it is reasonable to assume that some entities would have interest in swaying the HN community enough to put some effort into it. Yesterday for example the thread "Show HN: Twingate – A modern solution for remote access"[1] showed some signs of astroturfing as pointed out in the comment by crmrc114. Possibly as a form of advertising.

Response was very quick as I have usually seen though.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23326755

I can confirm I've personally been asked to post things on HN because I have an old account and so it would look more organic (I did not, not saying who asked because I'm not interested in starting a brouhaha).

my account is a year older than yours and I've never been asked by shadowy interest groups to astroturf, do you have any tips to improve my account's brand appeal?

Probably a combination of chance, ease of contact, and working for a large tech company thus signaling general obedience. It's not like it happens all the time, only happened once.

I presume you notified DanG. What did he say/do?

thanks for the indieweb link, that's useful :)

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